I am delighted to join you today. This conference comes at a time of
profound change and huge opportunity for international trade in the
textiles and clothing sector. At the end of December 2004, the Agreement
on Textiles and clothing will be terminated. All textiles and clothing
products will be fully integrated into WTO rules, and bilateral quotas
removed. Agreement to bring full multilateral disciplines to this sector
was one of the major victories of the Uruguay Round. Textiles and
Clothing had hitherto been the only sector of international trade in
manufactured goods which had fallen outside of multilateral rules, and
was instead governed by a series of trade-distorting regimes,
culminating in the MultiFibre Arrangement. Developing countries were
united in their determination to correct this anomaly. Full application
of WTO rules to international trade in textiles and clothing will be a
very positive and long-awaited development for the industries and
millions of consumers who will benefit from a more open,
non-discriminatory and transparent trading environment in this sector.

The end of December 2004 is also the deadline for another parallel and
independent process which may have a significant bearing on
international trade in textiles and clothing. This is the Doha
Development Agenda: a broad round of trade negotiations, launched in
September 2001. Both market access and rule-making issues are on the
table. As part of these negotiations, we hope to see tariff reductions
in the area of textiles and clothing. Changes to existing WTO rules or
new WTO disciplines which might be agreed may also have an impact on
international trade in this sector. I will come back to this later. But
suffice to say at this stage, it is crucial that both of these processes
complement each other in building a more open and dynamic world trading
regime.

ATC implementation

The implementation of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing is
technically on track. You will recall that the ATC is a ten year
transition process which was divided into four distinct phases. It began
in 1995 and will end on 31 December 2004. The first three of these
phases have been completed. Members carrying over quotas into the ATC — Canada, the European Union and the United States
— were required to
integrate 51 per cent of their textile and clothing imports into WTO
rules by the end of the third stage in December 2001, removing any
quotas applied. This target has been met. Concurrent with the
integration of products, the Members maintaining the quotas were also
required to progressively increase the annual growth rates at the
beginning of each stage. This has also been carried out.

Despite pressure from some exporting developing countries to integrate
more progressively, the importing countries decided not to follow that
track. Accordingly, the fourth and final phase will result in product
integration and quota removal of the remaining 49 per cent of imports.
The impact of this phase in terms of real liberalisation will be very
significant. Only twenty per cent of the products integrated into WTO
rules in the first three phases of the ATC were subject to quotas. This
means, of course, that the remaining 80 per cent of quotas must be
eliminated by end December 2004, consisting of a total of 239 quotas
maintained by Canada, 167 quotas maintained by the European Union and
701 quotas maintained by the United States.

Furthermore, since the elimination of restrictions in the more sensitive
products has largely been left until the final phase, the adjustment
will be abrupt in these areas. The countries required to make this
effort have all expressed their commitment to stick by their WTO
obligations. This is important, but also expected. We should not forget
that the ATC process is not a negotiation, it is part of the
implementation process stemming from the Uruguay Round — a deal that has
already been done, and cannot be undone. To soften the impact of reform,
restraining countries could consider the possibility of voluntarily and
gradually eliminating some of these restrictions between now and the end
of 2004.

The post ATC Trading Environment

There is no question that the multilateral trading system will be
strengthened by full implementation of the ATC. As I mentioned earlier,
it is the only sector of traded manufactured goods which was exempted
from WTO disciplines. Indeed, since the end of the Uruguay Round it has
been the only sector in the universe of traded goods and services to
which a special transitional framework has been applied, as
liberalisation is undertaken.

As of 1 January 2005, WTO rules will apply to trade in textiles and
clothing as in all other areas of trade. These include the core WTO
principles of transparency and non-discrimination. Tariff preferences
for developing countries under the Generalised System of Preferences and
initiatives for least-developed countries, such as the European Union’s
“Everything but Arms” initiative and the United States’ “Africa Growth
and Opportunity Act” will remain. Regional trade agreements will
continue to be an important feature of the trading system with their
preferential market access features. WTO rules on anti-dumping to
prevent unfair trading practices and rules on safeguards to prevent
injurious trade flows will also apply. Members will have the right to
use the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism to resolve any trade disputes
that might arise in this area.

The impact of implementing the ATC will have several dimensions. First,
there is the political gain related to the credibility of the
multilateral trading system, at a time when it faces considerable
pressures. The system will be strengthened by the visible sign of
commitment by Members to make good on the WTO commitments that they have
undertaken. It will reaffirm the seriousness with which they take the
obligations of WTO Membership. Secondly, there are the efficiency gains
from eliminating highly distorting quotas that have led to an
inefficient global allocation of textile and clothing production.
Hopefully this will extend to increased production and trade. Thirdly,
there is the loss of quota rents on the part of ATC exporters. Finally,
there is the gain to consumers in importing countries.

There has been some difficulty in determining the exact quantitative
gains of the elimination of bilateral quotas — as the estimates of
studies range from gains of 6.5 billion US dollars per annum to 324
billion US dollars per annum. However, the message is clear — in that
all studies foresee very significant increases in global welfare as a
result of the conclusion of the ATC.

At the same time, however, there has been a great deal of discussion
about the impact of quota removal on individual countries. I notice that
this is one of the key themes in this conference. And in this opening
session, in particular, we will be addressing the issue of who will gain
from the elimination of quotas and whether the benefits will be spread
equally.

I think we should be cautious about how we approach this debate in order
not to undermine the principle of comparative advantage. If the
proposition is that liberalisation, in textiles and clothing, should not
be undertaken if it results in an unequal distribution of benefits, we
would need to consider what would be the impact of applying this
approach to other sectors in which for example Europe, or indeed any
other region or country, may be competitive. If we conclude that
textiles and clothing liberalisation may result in unequal benefits and
hence may require special treatment, would this imply movement back to
the sector specific regime in textiles that we have been striving for so
long to move away from? What about other sectors?

Having said this, it also seems to me that we need to show understanding
for the situation of any countries that have been able to participate in
the rather distorted markets we have had up to now, but that may
experience difficulty in a more open market. Practical ways need to be
identified and financed to aid any process of adjustment. But the
solution is not to invent new distortions.

Let me now turn to the opportunity presented by the Doha Development
Agenda to strengthen WTO rules and create a fairer and more open playing
field in textiles and clothing trade. Unlike the ATC, the Doha
Development Agenda is the subject of negotiation.

The Doha Development Agenda

Market access

Negotiations on market access in manufactured goods are part of the Doha
Development Agenda. The Doha mandate specifies that “no sector” will be
a priori excluded from the negotiations. Liberalisation of textiles and
clothing is therefore on the table. The mandate also clearly directs
Members to reduce or eliminate tariff peaks, high tariffs and tariff
escalation and “modalities” for cutting tariffs should be agreed by 31
May 2003. If the modalities agreed do address tariff peaks and
escalation, then this will likely have a bearing on further market
opening of textiles and clothing, as it is in areas of labour intensive
manufacturing, such as textiles and clothing as well as agriculture,
where these features tend to be concentrated.

Approximately 43 submissions have been made in the Negotiating Group for
negotiations on tariffs and non-tariff barriers. They suggest modalities
that would have the effect of tariff reductions ranging from as little
as possible to their staged elimination by 2015, most of them through
the application of formulae. Five countries have specific references to
textiles and clothing in their proposals, namely the United States,
Japan, the European communities, India and Singapore. There have also
been proposals for sectoral initiatives, including for textiles and
clothing. I should remind you also that the Doha Declaration says that
negotiations on tariffs shall take fully into account the special needs
of developing and least developed participants, including through less
than full reciprocity in reduction commitments.

Rules

The DDA negotiations on strengthening of WTO rules may also have an
impact on trade in textiles and clothing as in other goods. One area for
negotiation is anti-dumping. This instrument permits the levying of
special duties if products are exported at less than their so called
“normal value”, where such dumped exports cause injury to the industry
in the importing country. Many WTO Members have become concerned at the
increased use of anti-dumping worldwide. There is one point I need to
make clear in the present context. This is that anti-dumping duties are
to counter injurious dumping, not to provide a general safeguard against
increased imports or a substitute for quotas.

Another area of the rules negotiations concerns clarification and
improvement of disciplines and procedures relating to regional trade
agreements (RTAs). There can be little doubt that the combination of
quotas, high tariffs and so-called “preferential rules of origin” under RTAs has had some distortive effects on trade in textiles and clothing.
While the quotas and tariffs are already being addressed in other ways
as I have outlined, it remains at this stage to be seen whether the
negotiations on WTO rules relating to RTAs will have an impact on the
textiles and clothing sector.

In conclusion, it is clear that trade in textiles and clothing will take
place in the next few years in a changing policy environment. Change is
always a challenge and some will be adversely affected by it. But the
newly emerging environment should be one which will, in general, offer
new opportunities and expanding trade to industries in both developing
and developed countries and allow the more efficient allocation of
resources. Furthermore consumers worldwide stand to benefit from the
more liberal trading environment.

It would be naïve to think that the protectionist tendencies which have
blighted the trade for so long will disappear overnight. Clearly they
will not. But things are now at last moving in the right direction.
Policy-makers worldwide must ensure that this direction is steadily
maintained and not be diverted by any short term difficulties in
adjustment which may emerge.

We must build on the achievements of the Agreement on Textiles and
Clothing to drive forward reform in this sector – using the opportunity
of the Doha Development Agenda negotiations to create a truly dynamic
environment for international trade in textiles and clothing for the
benefit of all.